Warcraft DDoS hacker sentenced to one year in prison

Romanian man fined and sentenced.

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A 38-year-old Romanian man called Calin Mateias has been hit with a fine of nearly $30,000 USD (that's £22K or just over €25K) and sentenced to a year in federal prison after he overloaded Blizzard's World of Warcraft servers all the way back in 2010.

The DDoS attacks were related to disputes with other players and were initiated for a variety of reasons, "including the division of loot and membership in raid teams", according to the US Department of Justice:

"Between February and September 2010, typically in connection with in-game disputes with other players, Mateias launched DDoS attacks on World of Warcraft servers in Europe [...] Mateias' DDoS attacks caused World of Warcraft servers to crash and prevented some paying customers from accessing the game."

The fine relates to compensation owed to Blizzard for the disruption to their services and the cost of combatting the attacks. Mateias, whose in-game name is Dr Mengele (after the Nazi doctor who committed terrible crimes during WW2), has been in custody since his extradition to the US last November and earlier this year pleaded guilty to one count of intentional damage to a protected computer.